


peel your petals off

by breathingvacancy



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Friendship/Love, Hanahaki Disease, Implied Sexual Content, Unrequited Love, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-11 16:11:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15319239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathingvacancy/pseuds/breathingvacancy
Summary: Juleka can feel it, her lovesick soul’s stupid plant, growing and blooming and killing her slowly.





	peel your petals off

**Author's Note:**

> will i ever write something happy about these two? 
> 
> title is from the nicole dollanganer song, fleurs captives. this was written awhile back, i just forgot to post it. it was before luka was introduced, so sorry, no luka even tho i like him a lot. the next time i write something about these two, it will be happy and luka will be in it.

Sometimes it seems as though Juleka’s world begins and ends with Rose. That isn’t true, of course. Juleka’s world is made of many other things, like broken curses and mixed heritage and horror movies and intricate nail art. Juleka’s world is constantly playing bass too loud for her neighbors' taste and speaking with a voice too quiet for her own.

Juleka’s world is built from the bones and bricks of many, many things that are not Rose. But Rose, Rose shines as bright as the sun. Juleka finds herself revolving around her even when she tries not to, even when she thumbs through the pieces in her world that have nothing to do with Rose.

Juleka tells herself she is not in love. Juleka loves Rose but she cannot possibly be in love with Rose, Rose whose own world takes inspiration from fairytales edited to be friendlier and marketable to kids. Fairytales like that always end in true love’s kisses from boys like Prince Ali.

(Always, always boys like Prince Ali and never ever girls like Juleka.)

At first when she talked about him, it wasn’t so bad. It was cute even, Rose bubbling with vim and waving her hands as she spoke.

Juleka had thought it was just admiration. Prince Ali was everything Rose aspired to be, charitable, kind, adored for his inner beauty. Rose got her chance to meet him and Juleka thought that would be that.

But he’d given Rose his phone number and that had been a game changer. Now they texted each other all the time. Sometimes Juleka would see pink bloom in her cheeks when she read something he sent her. Sometimes all it would take is one text from him to have her smiling like she knows some sweet secret for the rest of the day. Sometimes she would laugh and it wasn’t her public cherubic chortling, it was the satin soft, private laugh that previously only Juleka had been able to free.

It wasn’t just admiration anymore. It was affection. Rose could go on and on about Ali all day— sometimes she does— and all the things they used to talk about get lost in the dust as she gushes about something Ali did or the way he makes her feel.

Juleka tacks plastic smiles over her aggravation and indulges her at first. But eventually she’s sick of it. She’s sick of hearing about Ali. He shouldn’t be able to make Rose laugh like that. He’s taking her best friend and it’s not fair, and it’s not okay. He’s a prince and he could have anyone else. Juleka only has Rose.

Juleka’s world is made of many things, but it’s not made of many people. On the surface there are friends, Marinette, Alya, even Nino and Adrien. But they’re casual friends, friends you can eat pizza with. Friends who share your grief about tough homework and want you to feel included even if they don’t quite get you.

But see, that’s the thing, they don’t get Juleka. Rose does. Rose is the kind of friend who doesn’t just share the pizza, she orders it with everything Juleka likes, even the banana peppers that she herself wrinkles her nose at and picks off. Rose is the kind of friend who reads between the lines of Juleka’s poems, even when they’re emo trash. Rose is the kind of friend who will go to bat with bullies two heads taller when it means defending Juleka. 

Rose isn’t just bright like the sun, she is sunlight incarnate. Her smiles illuminate Juleka’s world when it grows too dark, her arms a safe harbor from the threat of curses and voices that drown out her own. Rose is as warm as beach sand between the toes, the wings on her favorite shirt the perfect representation of her place in Juleka’s world. Rose is her angel, always there to lift Juleka up with a gentle touch.

At least she used to be. But now Rose is more concerned with Prince Ali this and Prince Ali that. It’s making Juleka sick.

No, literally, it’s making her sick!

As she sits in the cafeteria listening to Rose ramble on about Ali yet again, her stomach gives an uneasy lurch. It’s not new, exactly. She always feels bad when Ali’s name pours from Rose’s lips like this, over and over and pushing out Juleka’s own. But this time it’s different, it’s harsher and she can’t ignore it.

The nausea rises and a sharp, dragging pain suddenly joins the party. Rose uses “date” and “Ali” in the same sentence and thorns crawl up Juleka’s throat, her rib cage shrinking impossibly tight. She’s seized by an abrupt coughing spasm, the breath squeezed right out of her lungs.

“He said he would come visit the next time his schedule clears and that we could…Hey, Juleka? Juleka are you alright?”

Rose puts a gentle hand to the small of her back. Juleka is doubled over, one cough after another painfully wrenching out of her. Something thick squishes into her mouth and the next thing she knows, she’s hacking it out all over her lunch tray.

She doesn’t vomit, exactly. There are no acidic chunks of breakfast in splatters of syrupy spew.

What there are, are petals. Bright red rose petals, slick with spit and blood and ruining Juleka’s white rice. Juleka gapes at them, wide-eyed as she pants to get her breath back.

A small crowd gathers around their lunch table, gawking openly at the petals that spilled from Juleka’s mouth. Juleka shudders, timidly raising her head and squirming under the oppressive attention. Rose turns her own shocked face from the petals and stands up suddenly.

“Back up!” She demands, her voice shaky but determined. “Give her some room!”

Juleka puts a hand over her chest, trying to pace her breaths. Her throat burns. There’s a heaviness in her chest that makes it hurt when her inhales are too deep. Rose takes her by the arm and helps her stand up, guides her stumbling from the mess of spit and blood and petals.

“My poor Juleka,” she murmurs sadly. “Let’s go to the nurse’s office. That was weird but it’s going to be okay.”

Except it’s not. Because Juleka is in love after all.

* * *

Juleka’s world begins and ends with rose…petals. This is true even if most people can barely believe it. What happened in the cafeteria was only the beginning.

Juleka had been okay the rest of that day. Well no, not okay, exactly. Because she remembers the stories her Baa-baa used to tell her, hanahaki being one of them. The disease born from unrequited love, tainted flowers that grow inside you until their roots pierce your bowels and their leaves sprout through your ribs, and their petals smother the breath right out of you. Knowing that, Juleka hadn’t been okay at all. She’d just managed to make it the rest of the day without an episode.

But now it’s been a week and the episodes come on a little stronger each time. Juleka can feel it, her lovesick soul’s stupid plant, growing and blooming and killing her slowly. She can feel it when she sighs deeply and the leaves scratch her lungs. She can smell it in the scent, as cloying as Rose’s perfume, always burning her nose even when it should acclimate. She knows it every time she coughs herself dizzy, unable to breathe until she vomits up bundles of wet, bloody petals.

It’s the thorns that are making her bleed, she thinks. It’s not a metaphor, there are really thorns in her throat, stabbing and pinching and making it hurt to talk.

“Every rose has thorns, huh?” She mutters darkly as she wipes bloody petals from her palms for the fifth or sixth, or maybe even seventh time today.

She thinks of her best friend, so sweet, once her only thornless Rose. She’s been constantly buzzing around Juleka like a worried little honeybee. She always escorts Juleka to the nurse’s office and keeps the other students from crowding her like a morbid circus attraction. Rose has a surprisingly impressive glare when she finally unleashes it and for Juleka’s sake, she is willing to do just that.

If only she’d be willing to give up Ali.

* * *

It’s been two weeks now and it’s just getting worse, like Juleka knew it was going to do. She pulls along an oxygen tank now, hooked up with a nasal cannula to supply her with air she’d otherwise have to battle the roses for. She isn’t sure if you’re allowed to decorate oxygen tanks or not, but she puts stickers on hers idly. Bat stickers, band stickers, puffy emoji stickers. Anything to make it look less impersonal.

Her parents want her to stay home but Juleka keeps going to school, mainly for the distraction. Rose doesn’t talk about Ali as much anymore. It’s funny, really. She barely talks about him at all these days, far more focused on Juleka.

It seems like they’ve swapped places, almost. Rose revolves around Juleka like she is the sun. She frets over her constantly, sweeping away the petals whenever Juleka coughs them up and wiping the spit and blood off her lips with cotton handkerchiefs. She indulges Juleka more than ever, buying her stickers for her tank and basically giving her the answers to the homework she’s too busy dying to keep up with.

And she is dying for sure, Juleka knows that. There are two and only two cures for hanahaki disease: requited love or surgery. Rose simply isn’t in love with her. She’d try to be if she knew that’s what was making Juleka sick, because that’s the kind of person Rose is. But just like you can’t force yourself to fall out of love with someone (Juleka’s been trying ever since she coughed up the first damn petal), you can’t force yourself to fall in love with someone. Even if you could, Juleka would never accept that, making Rose go through the motions to try and light a spark.

Surgery? Juleka is tempted sometimes. When her arms ache from dragging around her tank and the nasal cannula makes her nostrils itch. When she can’t eat because even pizza with banana peppers and sweet bubble tea end up tasting like potting soil and rotting leaves. When she coughs and coughs and coughs, and can’t stop coughing until the thorns shred her throat and sticky petals go flying from her lips.

But surgery would mean forgetting Rose. It would mean forsaking all the memories she’s made with her best friend and all the time they’ve spent together until now. It would mean incinerating every sleepover, every hug, every laugh, every tear…

Juleka can’t do that. Who would she be without those experiences? Who would she be, waking up to a life where every moment she’s known with her best friend is lost to her?

Juleka thinks that would ruin her. She would rather die as herself with all the pieces of her built by her friendship with Rose in tact.

The flower inside her twitches as though mocking her for her pondering her own demise. She snaps forward, clapping her hand over her mouth as a coughing bout wracks her body. She hacks up clumps of petals and blood that plop wetly to the table and attract the attention of her classmates. Rose rubs her back in slow, comforting circles, humming worried under her breath while Juleka continues to cough.

Sometimes it feels like she’s going to cough up her own soul, if that makes sense. Juleka thinks it does. She squeezes her eyes shut, tired of looking at the hideous mess. Images of petals and blood burn the back of her eyelids anyway.

When she’s finally done, she’s trembling violently and panting like a shaggy dog in the sun. Rose gets up and brings the trashcan over. She brushes the mess into the trashcan, the petals smearing Juleka’s blood into the network of lines on her palm. Class resumes like nothing happened for everyone else. They’ve all grown accustomed to it.

Rose puts the trashcan back and takes her seat again. She scoots closer to Juleka though and takes her hand without prompting, tangling their fingers together.

“My poor Juleka,” she laments, her sympathy melting from her voice like butter.

 _I’m yours alright,_ Juleka thinks, surprising herself when the words ring in her head amused rather than bitter. _I’m yours. Are you going to do something about it?_

“Prince Ali knows a lot of fancy doctors,” Rose murmurs tentatively. “Maybe I should ask him to send one to you.”

This is the first time the prince has come up in awhile. As his name leaves Rose’s lips, Juleka feels unpleasant. As though there’s a many-legged insect crawling over her skin. That’s not fair on her part. Ali isn’t a bad person. In fact, he’s a very kind person.

But if things were always fair, then Juleka wouldn’t be puking flowers.

“No,” she murmurs, shaking her head. “They can’t help me.”

“How do you know?” Rose frowns. “You haven’t even tried.”

Juleka considers, debates what she can tell Rose if she can tell her anything at all.

“I already know what could cure me,” she offers honestly, her voice catching around the prickle of thorns.

Rose’s eyes widen. “Juleka! Why didn’t you say so sooner?”

Juleka looks down at their intertwined fingers. Rose’s hands are neat, skin supple, nails painted baby pink. Juleka’s skin is pale and dry with ailment, her own fingernails uneven and flaking. Juleka is always cold these days but where they hold hands there is warmth, Rose’s hand enveloping hers like a plush, wooly mitten.

She could stay here forever, holding hands like this.

But Rose…Rose doesn’t see it that way…

“I know the cure,” Juleka repeats. “But it’s impossible to get.”

“Have you tried?” Rose challenges, blue eyes ablaze.

Juleka shakes her head. “I know better.”

Rose gasps. She lets go of Juleka’s hand and abruptly stands, planting fists on her hips.

“You’re just going to give up without even putting up a fight!?” she demands, her voice piercing Juleka like a knife through the heart.

“Take your seat, Miss Lavillant!” orders the teacher.

Rose ignores her, doesn’t even seem to have heard her at all. Her stare is fixed on Juleka, unblinking, unrelenting. Only her bottom lip gives the slightest quaver.

“I don’t want to waste my time,” Juleka huffs tiredly. “I only have so much of it left, Rose.”

“What am I supposed to do without you!?” Rose cries, shrill and fraught. “Have you thought about that? If you won’t try for yourself, can’t you try for me?”

Her beloved’s naiveté scalds like the spill of hot tea and Juleka jumps to her feet even though the swift motion makes her dizzy, the vines of the flowers inside constricting her lungs, petals scraping the rungs of her rip cage. She slams her first down on the desk bruising pain travels all the way through her arm. Her breath whistles through her teeth as various emotions battle in her belly.

“You still get to be here! Can’t you try for me?” she fires back, heart wrenching in her chest.

_Can’t you try to love me?_

“What else can I do?” Rose throws her hands up. “Help me help you, Juleka!”

“Girls!” fumes Ms. Mendeleiev. “Enough!”

She is pointedly ignored.

“You—“ Juleka breaks off, firmly shaking her head.

 _You could love me_ , she thinks irresistibly. _Love me the way I love you._

But these are not things she could ever ask from Rose.

“Fine,” Rose says, deflating like a beach ball at the end of summer. She slumps back into her seat, defeated.

Juleka goes to take her seat as well. Another spasm interrupts. She lurches forward as a surge of petals spurt up her throat in a surge of floral bile. Her stomach does somersaults and her spew sprays fourth.

It takes so much out of her, Juleka passes out.

* * *

Going to school is out of the question at this point. Hell, Juleka’s parents probably want to put her in the hospital. But in Juleka’s mind, the hospital should be a place for healing, not a place for dying.

She would rather die in her home, in her own room, in her own bed. Her sheets are patterned with cartoon ghosts and her blankets smell like the lavender detergent her mother buys. Band posters decorate her walls and love notes she’ll never send are tucked away in the drawer of her desk. Dying is terrifying no matter what, but dying in the personalized dome of her room is preferable to dying in a sterile, eggshell hospital room.

She keeps a bucket beside her bed to hack endless roses into. Her mother rinses it for her, but the ring of blood on the bottom never comes clean. It must be a stain.

Rose takes a seat on the edge of her bed and holds Juleka’s stuffed bat, idly playing with its felt wings.

“Juleka?”

“Hm?”

“Who are you in love with?” she asks quietly, gaze briefly meeting hers before flickering away.

Juleka stops, gasps. Flowers flutter along the membranes of her insides.

“I looked up your symptoms,” Rose continues quietly. “It’s hard to believe, but this is happening because you’re in love with someone, right?”

Juleka slowly nods.

“Who is it?”

Juleka drums her fingers together. “Well…Rose, you know me better than anyone. Who do you think it is?”

Rose sets the stuffed bat aside crawls across the mattress, until she’s so close her breath fans warm over Juleka’s face. Juleka inhales sharply, but before she can speak Rose’s lips are covering hers. The flavor of bubblegum lipgloss banishes the taste of dirt she hasn’t been able to get out of her mouth in months.

Juleka threads her fingers in the soft, short locks of blonde as Rose’s hand comes up to cup her breast. Rose’s lips leave hers to draw breath and her lips brush over her jaw like velvet.

“You should’ve said something sooner,” she murmurs.

“I thought…Ali,” Juleka pants.

“Ali isn’t here,” Rose says, shaking her head.

“What does that m—“ Juleka breaks off with a soft gasp as Rose pushes her down to the pillows.

Rose climbs over her and skims her fingertips over the waistband of Juleka’s violet pajama bottoms.

“You love me, Juleka,” Rose says, beaming a marshmallow soft smile. “I love you too. Let me prove it. Let me uproot those stupid flowers.”

“Please,” Juleka begs, overcome with the hope, filling her to the brim and spilling over into streams of blissful tears. “Oh, Rose, please.”

Rose bends to place a light kiss on Juleka’s forehead and her fingers slip under.

* * *

When Rose leaves in the morning, Juleka’s breathing is clear. They eat breakfast together and she doesn’t throw up any of it, even asks for seconds to the delight and relief of her parents. Before Rose goes, she kisses her goodbye and promises to give her a call when she’s done finishing up some recently neglected homework.

Rose can’t let Juleka die. She wasn’t lying when she told Juleka she loved for, because she in fact loves her very much. Juleka is meant to be here. She’s meant to walk with Rose today, and tomorrow, through the ups and the downs.

Rose isn’t always as naive as people try to paint her. She’s a little slow sometimes, sure, she doesn’t always pick up on things as quickly as the others around her. But she certainly isn’t stupid and she knows Juleka better than anyone. She’s suspected for awhile that her best friend had feelings for her, she just didn’t realize how serious those feelings were or that the impression they were unrequited is what’s been making her sick.

It’s not exactly a false impression either, that those feelings are unrequited. Rose lifts her hand and flexes her fingers, fingers that the night before were warm inside Juleka and left pruned by the wetness of her inner walls. The activity scrubbed off some of her nail polish and the splotches of naked fingernail peek up at her between the intact fuchsia.

Rose liked making Juleka happy. And Juleka belongs in her future, so she’ll continue to make her happy, even if it means pretending to be in love. The way Rose loves Juleka isn’t quite the same, but maybe if she grooms it enough and if she spends enough time on it, it could become the same.

When Rose thinks of the future, of twenty years from now, she thinks of Juleka as the friend she meets for lunches and wine tastings and book clubs, and other sorts of things adults do. She thinks of Juleka in her future, but she never thinks of Juleka _as_  her future. Never thinks of Juleka as her bride in what would most certainly be a black wedding dress, and then Juleka as her wife after the fact.

Rose hasn’t thought of having a wife at all, really. She thinks of her future and she thinks of Ali as her groom, Ali as her husband after the fact. She thinks of being a princess and not the fantastical kind who live in ivory towers, but the good kind of modern princesses who use their privilege and prestige for those who don’t have it. Who travel on missions and give charity, and use their prominence to speak in support of those whose voices are all too often dismissed.

But the thing about life is that it doesn’t always go how you plan it and the things you think will be never have certainty. If saving Juleka means sacrificing an idealistic future, then so be it. Between having Juleka and not having her, Rose will pick having her no matter what she has to do.

She already cares for Juleka. How much harder can it be to take that step further for her?

She’s comfortable with Juleka. She is flattered by the feelings her friend has for her. She’s always wanted to give Juleka what she needs. If what Juleka needs is for Rose to be in love with her, then she’ll just have to fall in love with her.

Rose slips her phone from her pocket and shoots a text to Ali. A text she knows is necessary, even though her stomach churns as she types it out.

_I’m sorry, but we can’t talk anymore._

She blocks his number before he has the chance to convince her to reconsider with any kind of charming reply. As she pockets her phone, her stomach still hasn’t stopped churning. Her unease seems to turn into actual nausea and Rose hurries up the block to puke in a trashcan near the bus stop.

She grips the sides of it and to her immense surprise, hacks out a stream of white lilies washed in blood.


End file.
